Comments

What planet is the gentleman writing about? Human contributions to annual global carbon dioxide is about 5 percent. On top of this there is no experimental data showing a link to carbon dioxide changes causing global warming. Reducing human-caused carbon dioxide emissions to zero by 2050 would kill billions on our planet. Maybe that is the goal of those pushing replacing our inexpensive, abundant, and geographically distributed fossil fuels of coal, oil, and natural gas with expensive, unreliable, and vast land requiring renewable energy sources of solar, wind, ethanol from corn, other biofuels, etc.James H. Rust, professor of nuclear engineering Read more

Anyone's claims to climate change causes as outlined in this piece are dubious at best, completely misguided or fraudulent at worst. There is absolutely no need for any, or additional, regulations. The solution is to go prove it in a court of law. Surely, if the damages are what you say they are, and are as obvious as you claim, you should have no trouble making your case, winning a large settlement from the defendent, and forcing a behavioral change. Read more

CO2 is a “trace gas” in air and is insignificant by definition. It absorbs 1/7th as much IR, heat energy, from sunlight per molecule as water vapor which has 188 times as many molecules capturing 1200 times as much heat producing 99.8% of all “global warming.” CO2 does only 0.2% of it. For this we should destroy our economy, starve the world, cause hunger, riots and wars?

There is no “greenhouse effect” in an atmosphere. A greenhouse has a solid, clear cover trapping heat. The atmosphere does not trap heat as gas molecules cannot form surfaces to work as greenhouses that admit and reflect energy depending on sun angle. Gases do not form surfaces as their molecules are not in contact.

The Medieval Warming from 800 AD to 1300 AD Micheal Mann erased for his “hockey stick” was several Fahrenheit degrees warmer than anything “global warmers” fear. It was 500 years of world peace and abundance, longest ever.

Vostock Ice Core data analysis show CO2 rises followed temperature by 800 years 19 times in 450,000 years. Therefore temperature change is cause and CO2 change is effect. This alone refutes the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.

Methane is called “a greenhouse gas 20 to 500 times more potent than CO2,” by Heidi Cullen and Jim Hansen, but it is not per the energy absorption chart at the American Meteorological Society. It has an absorption profile very similar to nitrogen which is classified “transparent” to IR, heat waves and is only present to 18 ppm. “Vegans” blame methane in cow flatulence for global warming in their war against meat consumption.

Carbon combustion generates 80% of our energy. Control and taxing of carbon would give the elected ruling class more power and money than anything since the Magna Carta of 1215 AD.

Most scientists and science educators work for tax supported institutions. They are eager to help government raise more money for them and they love being seen as “saving the planet.”

Read the whole story in "Vapor Tiger" at Amazon.com, Kindle $2.99 including a free Kindle reading program for your computer.

Although it's true that the Paris text fails "to state explicitly what individual countries are required to deliver", it does provide that developing countries are exempt from either legal or moral obligation to make any GHG reduction. As such countries are responsible for between 65 and 70 percent of global emissions (China and India emit more that all developed countries taken together) it's hard to see how - without a complete renegotiation of the Paris Agreement - anything other than the most insignificant reductions will ever be made. And such renegotiation is surely most unlikely? Read more

Anothger viewpoint is this: adding GHGs to the atmosphere does no-one any good: we alreaedy see "horribles" (such as rising waters/Islands, Florida, immense heat waves/India, fires/USA, Canada) and these can only incre4ase over time,. There is no advantage (unless it be3 a cruel competitive capitalist advantage) to not doing as much as possible as soon as possible.

Why would any nation not want to convert ALL electric power generation to renewables ASAP? why not a goal and commitment to do it by 2030? 1% conversion per month? And why would rich nations not want to help poorer nations do this?

The massive do-nothing that we observe must be understood as a war (or suicide) made by powers-that-be agaisnt "the people".'

The hard problems (IMO) are replacement of all transportation with renewably-fueled vehicles (cars, trucks, aircraft, ships) and replacement of all manufacturing heating needs (furnaces, ovens) with renewables. But electric power generation is at least easy to understand. And doing it at a steady rate (of 1%.month, world-wide) would strongly encourage R&D and manufacturers of renewable technology to get busy. Eliminatiing subsidies for fossil-fuel production nand use though politically unpalatable in many places is a clear "win" as well. Read more

That's not really true, Peter. China has lifted over 650 million people out of poverty by providing access to reliable, inexpensive fossil-fuel (mainly coal) generated electricity. India is determined to follow suit - as are other East Asian countries. Hence their current investment in coal-fired power. None of that has anything to do with "cruel competitive capitalist advantage". Nor can these countries (except of course China) be realistically described as "powers-that-be".

Moreover there's evidence that at least some of these countries do not accept the West's claims that GHG emissions are causing for example rising sea levels. If China accepted that it would hardly be spending vast sums on the construction of new low-lying islands in the S China Sea. Read more

It took 21 conferences of the parties (COP 21) to find SOMETHING that everyone could agree on. So while the weaknesses are obvious, it's what we have.

Clearly, since the existing commitments are inadequate, we need to continue to measure them against scientifically valid emission targets, and translate the shortcoming to increased ambition. This isn't a particularly insightful observation. The real question is "how?" Read more

Zero carbon is of course a worthy ultimate goal, although we also need circular economic thinking to conserve non-renewable resources, and action to limit more powerful greenhouse gasses such as methane.

However, the most urgent challenge we face today is to build consensus for a Global carbon pricing system, as the only viable way to curb accelerating CO2 emissions. Governments, businesses and households all take decisions based on their current and future costs, so a universal carbon tax is the only way to stimulate investment and drive decision making in the right direction.

Of course to be viable, a new carbon pricing system must be agreed at a "Global" level - starting with the G20 nations. Indeed this is probably the single most urgent reason to establish a new "Global Economic Community" capable of coordinating policy across national governments.

The voluntary commitments made at COP21 must be encouraged. However, these good intentions will inevitably fail to limit climate change unless we can bring about the degree of Global governance required to drive real economic change.

From the article: "The Paris climate agreement includes a pledge to keep warming 'well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.' ”This shows the simultaneous heights of hubris and ignorance revealed by those signatories to the Paris climate agreement.First, there is no direct evidence, let alone scientific fact, that CO2 released by mankind burning fossil fuels is the predominant cause* of the relatively slight (by paleoclimate standards) global warming that has occurred over the last 200 years.Second, under the Paris "agreement", the world is preparing to spend untold $trillions on addressing global "climate change" . . . as if humans really know how to slow, let alone reverse, global warming, or can even obtain the capabilities to do such for mere $trillions.Third, as Earth exited the last period of global glaciation (the warming from the Younger Dryas cold period starting about 12,500 years ago, the global warming rate was higher than today, about 1.8 deg-F every 100 years. This average rate was sustained over a period of about 2,500 years! And during this extensive period of rapid global warming, the CO2 concentration levels in the Earth's atmosphere rose from about 190 to about 260 ppm, a big change! Of course, none of this can can be attributed to mankind releasing CO2 since human civilization, as defined by the beginning of large scale agriculture, started at most only about 8,000 years ago.*Here is the clearest evidence that this is NOT the case. The most accurate measurements of the changes in average global temperatures (Argo diving ocean sensors combined with satellite temperature measurements of ocean and land masses) show there was NO statistically significant increase in Earth's average temperature over the last 18 years, starting in 1998, leading up to the 2016 El Niño . . . and NONE of the world's best climate models predicted this "pause" in global warming. However, during this time human activities released approximately 35% of ALL of the CO2 emissions attributed to mankind's activities to date, and global atmospheric CO2 levels in fact increased by about 40 ppmv during this interval. From this, it is apparent that atmospheric CO2 level is just not the climate forcing function that it was claimed to be at the end of the 20th century.Read more

Well as the limitation of temperature rise looks questionable and concurrently a drought belt is steadily developing girdling the world we can expect unprecedented truely massive migration making the current so called 'migrant crisis' a Sunday picnic. Coincidence is when youre not paying attention to the other stuff going on Read more

PS On Air: The Super Germ Threat

NOV 2, 2016

In the latest edition of PS On
Air
, Jim O’Neill discusses how to beat antimicrobial resistance, which
threatens millions of lives, with Gavekal Dragonomics’ Anatole Kaletsky
and Leonardo Maisano of
Il Sole 24 Ore.

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